Lea Asja Pagenkemper

We open the new year with a solo exhibition by Lea Asja Pagenkemper, a young German artist from Berlin. In the first showing of her work in the Netherlands, she displays a series of new paintings at Galerie Akinci. Pagenkemper studied under Georg Baselitz at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. After graduating in 2004, she continued studying under Baselitz’s auspices as a Master’s Degree student in 2005.

Lea Asja Pagenkemper has discovered her own, refreshing style of painting in which she mixes a raw expressionism with the precision of realistic graphic art.

In her paintings, various aspects of the painter’s craft, art history, actual surroundings and her subjective perception are meticulously arranged and played off against each other. Pagenkemper paints (parts of) empty urban streets, with containers, hoardings and billboards packed with graffiti, drawings and writing. Entirely in tradition with this subject, she employs spray paint cans as well as oils and acrylics.

Pagenkemper incorporates the reality of the ubiquitous graffiti in the artistic context of her works. For her, graffiti is about marking territory and using signs to leave something behind as an original statement – perhaps even as ‘art’, like the cave paintings of the Stone Age. Pagenkemper is interested by the chaos of superimposed layers of signs, ornaments and language. She draws abundantly from her environment, whatever its character: documentary, psychological or relating to art history.

Lea Asja Pagenkemper has had ( solo) exhibitions at Galerie Jette Rudolph in Berlin, Museum Elgiz in Istanbul and Fondation La Maison Rouge in Paris (Collection Falckenberg). In 2006 she will take part in the group show ‘Youth of Today’ at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt.

Pressetext

Lea Asja Pagenkemper: High Fidelity